Technical Requirements

Technical Requirements

Technical Requirements Jonathan Poland

Technical requirements are specifications for a technology such as a system or application. It is common to define technical requirements with commanding verbs such as will, shall and must. Technical requirements are an opportunity to communicate business expectations for the end-to-end operational quality of a technology. As such, it can be a bad idea to fully delegate them to implementors, although they should certainly contribute. Technical requirements are typically designed to be smart. In many cases, technical requirements are specified at several levels of detail. For example, an initial requirement for a “flat structure” for a user interface may be later expanded with detailed specifications of screen flows and navigation.

Availability

The system will maintain availability of 99.99%.

Reliability

The system will maintain a mean time between failures of greater than 60 days.

Performance

The system will have an average page load time of less than 2 seconds.

Throughput

The system will handle 1,000 concurrent users while meeting performance objectives.

Standards

The system will comply with our architectural and security requirements with links to relevant standards.

Authentication & Authorization

The system will conform to our policy for authentication and authorization with links to relevant standards.

Serviceability

Changes and upgrades to the system will not require total outages.

Maintainability

Logging will be sufficient to quickly identify and resolve system problems with a mean time to repair of less than one hour for high severity incidents.

Accessibility

All videos will have accurate closed captioning.

Privacy

The user interface will not allow employees to view customer birth dates stored in the customer database.

Human Error

The system will detect when a price entered by a user is more than 10% from the realtime market price. This will result in a confirmation screen that warns the user of the discrepancy.

System Errors

System errors will result in an error code that will be communicated to the user. This code will be well documented in the help desk system to expedite support and incident resolution.

Information Security

User credentials and all personally identifiable information will be encrypted in storage and transit.

Audit Trail

Access to the database will result in logs including a high priority alert that is triggered for sensitive operations such as a database dump.

Internal Controls

The only persons that will have access to the decryption keys for customer data will be officially designated as data stewards. Data stewards will be prohibited from accessing databases and will not be given the authorizations required to do so.

Data

Customer data will be sourced from the customer database without permanently storing these fields in the billing system.

Data Migration

Historical customer invoices will be accurately migrated to the new system and will be viewable from the customer invoice screen.

Data Quality

The data migration will confirm that the billing rate is accurate for every customer.

Usability

Users will be able to permanently turn off each individual smart feature from the user preferences menu.

Productivity

Sales people will be able to generate a quotation using a single screen. It will be possible to regenerate the quotation without entering all fields again.

Structure

The sales system will have a flat hierarchy of screens whereby no screens are at a depth of greater than 3.

Interoperability

The website will work on all major operating systems, devices and browsers as specified in the current customer technology requirements [link to this document].

Vendor Lock-in

The system will be based on custom code and open source without any dependency on proprietary technologies.

Loose Coupling

The system will continue to fully function when the billing API is down with the exception of any functions that depend on uncached data from this API.

Transitional Requirements

The old billing system will remain fully operational for a period of 3 months after the launch as a reference that can be used to confirm the correctness of calculations, user interfaces and migrated data.

Learn More
Cost of Capital Jonathan Poland

Cost of Capital

The cost of capital is the required rate of return that a company must earn on its investments in order…

What is a Turnaround Strategy? Jonathan Poland

What is a Turnaround Strategy?

A turnaround strategy is a business plan that is implemented when a company is facing financial difficulties or declining performance.…

What is a Durable Product? Jonathan Poland

What is a Durable Product?

A durable product is a product that is designed to last for an extended period of time, typically several years…

Gap Analysis Jonathan Poland

Gap Analysis

A gap analysis is a method used to determine the distance between an organization’s current state and its desired future…

Market Forces Jonathan Poland

Market Forces

The interaction that shapes a market economy. Market forces are the factors that determine the supply and demand for a…

Sales Pipeline Jonathan Poland

Sales Pipeline

A sales pipeline is a visual representation of the sales process, from the initial contact with a potential customer to…

Chaos Theory Jonathan Poland

Chaos Theory

Chaos theory is a branch of mathematics that studies the behavior of complex systems and the impact of small changes…

Sales Operations Jonathan Poland

Sales Operations

Sales operations is the management of the processes and practices that support the sales function of an organization. It involves…

Adoption Rate Jonathan Poland

Adoption Rate

Adoption rate refers to the speed at which users begin to utilize a new product, service, or feature. It is…

Search →
content database

Search my thinking on business, finance,
and the capital markets or start below

What is Knowledge? Jonathan Poland

What is Knowledge?

Knowledge is the understanding, skills, and expertise that humans acquire through experience, education, and research. It can take many forms,…

Examples of Transparency Jonathan Poland

Examples of Transparency

Transparency refers to the practice of openly and honestly disclosing information to stakeholders within an organization, such as the public,…

Customer Acquisition 101 Jonathan Poland

Customer Acquisition 101

Customer acquisition is the process of acquiring new customers for a business or organization. It involves identifying potential customers, creating…

Over Planning Jonathan Poland

Over Planning

Over planning refers to the practice of spending excessive amounts of time planning without implementing any of the plans. This…

Contract Awards Calendar 150 150 Jonathan Poland

Contract Awards Calendar

Governments around the world typically follow a structured and organized process for awarding contracts to suppliers, contractors, and service providers.…

Razor and Blades Jonathan Poland

Razor and Blades

The razor and blades model, also known as the bait and hook model, is a business strategy that involves selling…

Product Development Jonathan Poland

Product Development

Product development is the process of designing, creating, and launching new products. It typically involves a number of different steps,…

Customer Retention Jonathan Poland

Customer Retention

Customer retention is the practice of reducing the loss of customers to competitors. A high customer retention rate typically results…

Strategic Planning Techniques Jonathan Poland

Strategic Planning Techniques

Strategic planning is the process of defining an organization’s direction and making decisions on allocating its resources to pursue this…